The Fruit of an Expository Pulpit

Amen. Well it's good to have one back this evening. It honors the Lord that you're here. It blesses me and your pastor that you're here. And Pastor Keith, we agree that the Word of God is used by the Spirit of God to revive the hearts of the people of God. You know there's such a thing as a supernatural outpouring of the Spirit, a sovereign work of God in revival. But there's a sense of revival by which our affections for Christ, our love of His church, our stir to fresh and anew. And that can happen in a local church in a meeting like this.

Sunday morning, Sunday night, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday evenings that the Word of the Lord is wave after wave flowing over us, filling our minds, renewing our mind to the will of God, the Word of God. And it does something on the inside of us. The Word of God is quick and powerful, sharper than any two-edged sword. It does a work of division on the inside. If it cuts away stuff, that ought not be there. And then it graphs on what ought to be there. And so it's good that you're here. I've been in pastoral ministry for a long time and I know that it's cost you something to be here.

That there are other things that people are doing on a night like this that you're not doing because you're here to soak in the scriptures and to fellowship with the saints and to be faithful to the Lord and in your local church. Well, the last three services we've been looking at Psalm 84 and I pray that the Lord's use those messages to see the beauty of the Lord's church, to help us understand that there is such a thing as a battle for the Lord's church, and also to partake of the benefits that we saw last night.

We're going to be in Ephesians chapter 4 tonight and this is going to be a little lap over and I think each of the messages have done that. A little lap over here, a little lap over there to give us a cohesive whole or a framework that has a unity about it. Tonight I'm going to talk about the fruit of an expository pulpit out of the 4th chapter of Ephesians. So if you have your copy of God's Word open, I'm going to start reading in verse 11 and I'm going to read through verse 16 but tonight we're going to look at most especially verse 13, 14 and 15.

Starting in verse 11, this is the inspired, infallible, authoritative, sufficient Word of our God. And He Himself gave some as apostles and some as prophets and some as evangelists and some as pastors and teachers for the equipping of the saints for the work of service to the building up of the body of Christ until we all attain to the unity of the faith and to the full knowledge of the Son of God to a mature man, to the measure of the stature which belongs to the fullness of Christ so that we are no longer to be children tossed here and there by waves carried about by every wind of doctrine, by the trickery of men, by craftiness and deceitful scheming.

And speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in all aspects into Him who is the head that is Christ from whom the whole body being joined and held together by what every joint supplies according to the properly measured working of each individual part causes the growth of the body for the building up of itself in love. Well Lord we ask that You have blessed the preaching of the Word tonight. Give us ears to hear. Lord, work in our hearts. Work miraculously. Lord, prune off those dead branches that are unfruitful and graft on the fruitful branches instead.

Give me the ability to proclaim the truth not in my strength but in Yours, not in my authority but in Yours, not in my wisdom but in Yours. And Lord let these truths be pinned to our heart. May our minds grab hold of them. Lord may our wills be inclined to them and subordinate to them. And Lord may we honor You as we hear them. We need Your help tonight. So many have worked so hard today and have come just at the right moment to come into the house of the Lord. Bless them Lord and give them energy and give them ability to pay attention even though their bodies are very tired. So Lord be with us.

We ask that Jesus come and invade this time and space in our lives and we ask it in His name. Amen. What is a healthy church? And how does a church reform to biblical health? And I know this is something that your pastor probably talks about quite a bit here. We are talking about it quite a bit at the church I serve. And the reason that we talk about it and the reason we ask questions such as these is because they are not secondary questions. Healthy New Testament local churches are a rarity. The trend is in our world and you all know this for a church to adopt the methodology of the world and then expect God in some way to bless it.

What I mean by that is that we accommodate the standards of the world in the context of the church using the methods that the world uses and using that we then attract worldly people. What we have done is traded biblical patterns for worldly pragmatics. The philosophy of if it works use it. We have adopted the idea whatever practices draw people that we ought to use them. Whatever tactics capture their attention that is what we ought to employ. Whatever method that it takes to get them into the door that is what we ought to be implementing and whatever it takes to keep them we ought to give it to them.

And it is not exaggerate to say that most churches have adopted that philosophy of ministry especially in SBC churches. And the most well attended churches in our communities I know it is this way in prior Oklahoma are those that flex the best ingenuity muscle. People in our community shuffle from church to church only to land where their itch is scratched the best. Without any consideration being given to scriptural fidelity because the scriptures in so many churches are not given precedent.

And what we begin to do is try to satisfy wrongly ordered desires and that is what the church is aiming at to satisfy those wrongly ordered desires in people's lives. And by the way beloved this is a global epidemic. This is not just in Brookhaven. This is not just in prior. This is around the globe. I talked to pastor friends in Africa and in Europe and all over the globe and that pulpits have given away the scriptures to accommodate appetites and desires that are disordered by this present world. Church services then are geared to entertain people and not to transform people.

The result of this is that the church looks more like a night club than a church. And by the way beloved this kind of idealism in a church like that is powerless to save sinners and it is powerless to mature saints. So to answer the question that I raised in my introduction, a healthy church, how can it be formed? How can a healthy church be built? It must be founded upon divine truth. A healthy church is cultivated by the truth of God. A healthy church is maintained by the truth of Almighty God. We're familiar with Matthew 16, whatever. Jesus was asking questions of His disciples. Who do they say that I am? And we know their answer.

Some say you're John the Baptist. Some say that you're Elijah. Others say that you're one of the great prophets. Then Jesus hones in on the end and says, "But who do you say that I am?" And we see Peter bold as he always was, stands and says that you are the Son of the living God. You're the Christ of God. You are God's Messiah. Jesus answers and says to him, "How blessed you are, Simon Barks Jonah, for flesh and blood has not," note the language, "has not revealed this to you but my Father which is in heaven." Then He goes on to say that you're a Peter and upon this rock I will build my church.

Not upon Peter but upon the rock of divine revelation, upon the truth of God. I will build my church and then the gates of Hades shall not prevail against it or overpower it. So what is it saying here? Jesus is saying that the church is built upon the divine revelation that finds its centrality in Jesus Christ. And because of this, this kind of church is built upon the rock. Jesus Christ is an immutable church, a permanent church. This kind of church will be the church that will be blessed. This is what a true church looks like. This is a healthy church.

So to answer the question, a healthy church is the result of biblical fidelity and not seeker sensitivity. The reason I say this by way of introduction is because the text that I just read shouts a loud amen to the veracity of what we just stated. The context here is that of, you can look back up in verse 1 of chapter 4. Paul by the way has given lots of doctrinal truth in the first three chapters. Now he's given us application. He exhorts the Ephesians to walk worthily of the calling with which they've been called. He says you've got to do that in humility and in gentleness and patience and bearing with one another in love.

You've got to be diligent to keep the unity of the spirit and the bond of peace. He talks about how you've been given gifts, each one of you. Verse 7, this talks about there's no Christian that is giftless. Those gifts are given to use in the context of a local church. By the way, Paul's writing to a local church. Then he comes down to verse 11 and says that he has given some unique gifts in the church. Disasters and teachers and evangelists. I would make a very powerful argument that apostles and prophets no longer exist. That those offices came to an end once we received the canon of scripture.

Those gifts were given that God might speak to these apostles and to use them as messengers that they might write what we have now in the New Testament. Ephesians 2, 20 says that is the foundation of the church and whenever the foundation of the church is laid you don't need those offices anymore fulfilling those functions. The offices are the gifts of evangelists. I would argue are those that plant churches and do missionary work where the gospel has not been named. Then pastors/teachers, which I believe in the Greek, is one, the pastor that teaches, not two separate things, but one and the same, the Granville sharp rule.

Two nouns there with one definite article in the Greek language means you take them as one. A pastor/teacher, what you have in your pastor, Pastor Chris. Their primary responsibility is to do what? Paul told Timothy, "Preach the word." The larger context, again, I argue is that Paul is telling them that they need to walk worthily of this calling and so for a church to walk worthily of the call of God, the teaching/preaching gift that God has given to pastors must be exercised in the context of the church because God uses the word to build His church His way.

These gifts and I'll argue tonight are used for the maturing of the church that we might grow up. That is the method that God uses for the health of His precious blood-bought church is fidelity in the pulpit in the preaching of the word of God. I believe that true preaching is expository preaching. Expositional preaching is faithful preaching. Expository preaching is contextual preaching, grammatical, syntactical, consecutive, primarily consecutive preaching. Why is that? Because God gave us an entire Bible and it takes an entire Bible to make a mature Christian.

It needs to be preached in its entirety, Old and New Testament, verse by verse by verse. Here a little, there a little. Here a little and there a little. And faithful to the word of the Lord and the Lord builds His church His way. And I believe it's clear that verse by verse proclamation of the word of God, the words that God has breathed out, theonustos, is critical for the health of the church, not only that but that we might function biblically.

That a whole Christian is nurtured by a whole Bible and that it is a pastor's job to feed the flock of God with accurate explanation and powerful application that is drawn right from the text itself. There's not another way to reform the church to health. Outreaches are valuable but that is an extension of a healthy church. That is not the cause of it. There are not any shortcuts to this. It's hard work isn't it pastor? There's not an alternate route.

There's not a substitute for faithful consecutive proclamation of the word of God that every verse demands to be preached because it's been breathed out by God and it ought to be brought to bear up on our hearts and that God will do a work in our hearts through the word of God being proclaimed His way. That is God's manner of reforming His church. The meat and potatoes of church life is this pulpit ministry. Your pastor does a fabulous job exegeting and proclaiming the truth of scripture. Luther wrote about the work of the word in the Reformation. He said this, he says, "I simply taught, preached and wrote God's word. Otherwise I did nothing.

And while I slept, the word so greatly weakened the papacy that no prince or emperor ever inflicted such losses upon it." Luther said, "All I did was preached the word." So tonight I want us to talk about this. First of all I want you to know that it is the work of the word of God to strengthen our doctrinal unity. Look at verse 13. It says, "Until we all attain to the unity of the faith and of the full knowledge of the Son of God, to a mature man, to the measure of the stature which belongs to the fullness of Christ." This word here, attain, literally means to arrive at a particular state or to achieve something.

It can mean to get to a geographical destination or to reach a goal. And we attain this unity of the faith. It's not the same faith that was mentioned in verse 3 where the Lord inspired word tells us that we're to maintain the unity of the Spirit and the bond of peace. That's not the context here. That's not the meaning here. This simply means a unity in our doctrinal understanding in what the word of God says. It's the work of the preaching of the word of God to strengthen us in our understanding of the great doctrines of the faith. This unity that He's speaking about is framed around the truth revealed to us in the Scriptures.

Just as sanctification is progressive, our doctrinal knowledge is also progressive. That we're always in a continuum of learning. We're always in a continuum of doctrinal sanctification. So week in and week out, faithful preaching grows us to where we are one in the unity of the faith, the once delivered faith. What God has revealed, the pillars that undergird the church, the truth once delivered to us. This is what God does. It's part of a worthy walk as humility where we receive the word of God preached. I argue with people sometimes and to teach them the Scriptures.

They come into my office when I argue with me, "Well, Pastor, you know, that goes against what I have always believed." But this is what the Scripture says. We all bet I was taught when I was a little boy, but this is what the Scripture says. And what happens is that people in their pride hold on to what they think they know instead of letting their mind being formed by what the word of God really clearly and powerfully says and that an arrogance or a pride of heart keeps them stunted in their spiritual maturity in their doctrinal knowledge.

The Scripture tells us in Proverbs 18, 15, "The heart of understanding acquires knowledge and the ear of the wise seeks knowledge." So we've got to humble ourselves to listen to the arguments the Bible makes about doctrinal truths. We need to be willing to let go of what we think that we know that we might make room for what the word of God clearly says. And by the way, God gives pastors like yours to preach doctrinal truth, to instruct the church, to inform our minds, to give us a solid doctrinal unity in the context of a local church.

Listen, the fact that we need teachers, the fact that we need preachers, that God gifted the church with them presupposes we don't know everything that we ought to know and that we need to be taught. You know, none of us come to Christ with a fully developed Christology. None of us come to Christ with a fully developed understanding of the Gospel. Each one of us came to faith in Christ with a rudimentary understanding of the Gospel, an elementary understanding of truth. We came to know Christ in the basics of the Gospel. But listen, that's the gateway to the Christian faith. That by no means is the consummation of the Christian faith.

The Christian is to be committed to lifelong learning, lifelong growing. We just don't know everything. And God has gifted pastors to teach and preach the word of God that we might grow in our doctrinal understanding that our foundation might be jellified, it might be solidified, it might be helped on a long as a church that we might have doctrinal unity. And by the way, this is indispensable to our maturing personally. And it's the faithful exposition, preaching of God's word that deepens our doctrinal convictions. Our knowledge of the word of God broadens. Our theological convictions are framed up by the scriptures that we're being taught.

Line up online, precept upon precept, week after week, throughout a lifetime we're growing, we're maturing, and that we are learning and we're being unified in doctrinal truth in the context of a local church. You may think, "Well, I see so many differences. You know, this church believes this, this church believes that. It seems also disjointed to me. All these dozens of denominations are all separated by doctrinal distinctions." But I will say this, that the script has not been finalized yet. The word of God is at work. And by it we are attaining the unity of faith.

Listen, not everybody holds the same doctrinal convictions that I hold to or you hold to. But listen, there was a time in my life where I didn't hold the doctrinal convictions that I now hold. But the Lord has through the teachers and preachers in the church that God has blessed us with helped me to deepen my understanding. He's helped root out these misunderstandings that I have had in my own theology, in my own doctrine, and has helped me to be solidified with good solid brothers and sisters in the church that we are one. So God sets men in the church to help us to be unified theologically and doctrinally.

We're always reforming by the word of God to strengthen our understanding of what the teachers teach us, and an expository pulpit is the method that God has ordained to help us doctrinally. Secondly, it's the work of the word of God in the second part of verse 13 to deepen our knowledge of Christ. Let's read it again until we all attain the unity of the faith and of the full knowledge of the Son of God. As in doctrine, we just simply don't know everything yet. But listen, we don't know Christ in the way that we will know Christ in the future as the word of God that works in our lives.

We all have come to faith in Christ as Christ is the very object of our salvation, but listen, we do not come to Christ with a fully developed Christology. The word knowledge here comes from the Greek term "epiknosis." It means true knowledge, definite knowledge, real knowledge. Paul uses the same term when he writes to Colossae in chapter 1, verse 9 and 10 for this reason also, "Since the day we heard of it, we have not ceased to pray for you and ask that you would be," listen to this, "filled with the knowledge of his will in all spiritual wisdom and understanding so that you will walk in a manner worthy of the Lord to please him in all respects, bearing fruit in every good work." Listen to this, "and multiplying in the full knowledge of God." One source wrote, "At the heart of that unity is a common knowledge of and love for Jesus Christ." So it's the primary task of an expositor to preach Christ from all of scripture.

Our Bible is saturated with Christology. Just in the last couple of days we've seen Jesus in the Psalter. We've seen Jesus in the Psalms. He's the primary theme of all of the Bible. Jesus addressed the Pharisees in John 5. He says, "You search the scriptures, for in them you think you have eternal life, but it is these who give testimony to me." The scriptures are all Christ-centered. Listen, there's a scarlet thread that's woven throughout all the tapestry of scripture, and that scarlet thread is Christ. And this knowledge here, this epignosis is not simply academic possession or data. There's the idea of experiential knowledge.

It's a tasting knowledge. It's a full knowledge of Christ, but it's not simply theologically framed truths, but it's experiential. It's relational. R.C. Trench in his helpful book, "Cenonyms of the New Testament" writes of this. He's not just talking about an academic ability to recite various doctrines about Christ, although that's important, he says. Rather he's talking about knowing the Son of God in an intimate, personal way as we come to know Christ more deeply, we will experience closer unity in Christ. And we cannot commune with Christ outside of the parameters of the knowledge that's been revealed by God about Christ.

The scriptures are Christ-soaked. The more we know about Christ, the more we can experience Christ. And as Christ is faithfully proclaimed verse by verse, we come to know Christ in ever increasing measures. This was central to the high priestly prayer of Christ in John 17.3. This is eternal life. Listen to this. "That they may know you, the only true God and Jesus Christ whom you have sent, that they may know you." That's the prayer of our great high priest for us, that we might know him. And as the Bible is being faithfully preached, the reality and the truth about Jesus Christ just simply can't be avoided. He's on every page.

Charles Haddon Spurgeon once said, "I take my text and I make a beeline to the cross with it." And what he meant by that is that he wants to take the Bible and reveal Christ no matter where he's at, whether he's in Genesis or whether he's in the Revelation or whether he's somewhere in between because Christ is the theme of this great truth that God's given us in our Bibles. The scriptures speak of him. You remember in Luke 24, Jesus is on the road to Emmaus with those two disciples and that he opened up their minds to understand the scriptures.

He revealed that he was the one that the scriptures were pointing to and speaking of and he started in the Old Testament and he began to unpack that in their hearing and their hearts burned. They learned about Christ. Listen, every week our knowledge of Christ ought to be growing. I pray that in these revival restoration meetings that our knowledge of Christ is growing, that our love for Christ is maturing and that's the point of preaching. That's the point of the gospel being proclaimed. Paul wrote to Corinth and said, "We preach Christ." He's on every page in scripture. He's the primary theme of every book.

No preaching can be called faithful preaching if Jesus Christ is absent. And it's the work of the Word of God to give us, in our text it says, the full knowledge of Christ. And it's my job and it's your pastor's job to preach Christ and the power of the Spirit and to reveal all that scripture reveals about him. There's a little book that I love. I gave a copy or I had your pastor order a copy of it, The Preacher's Catechism. It's written by Lewis Allen, he is I believe an English or a Scottish man.

And he says this, he says, "No text is ever properly handled if people aren't led to its truth about Jesus who is on center stage in God's redemptive drama." Amen. Amen. And that's my aim in every sermon I preach. And I know it's your pastor's as well. That I want to proclaim the excellencies of Jesus in every sermon in my Old Testament expositions I want to show that Jesus is coming. In my New Testament sermons I want to show that Christ has come and then revealed the glories of his work and then to make known the demands that he has demanded of us as his people.

I want my people to know your pastor wants you to leave here every sermon, every week, every Sunday morning, every Sunday night, every Wednesday night and in between times knowing more about Christ than when you came. That's how healthy churches are built. It's not built by fanciful programs. It's not built by witty ideas that are formulated by some PhD setting in a skyscraper in downtown New York City. That it's through the Word of God as it's being breathed upon by the Holy Spirit of God that comes into contact with the hearts of those that have been born of God that we might conform to Christ, that we might have this full knowledge of him.

That he provided us the work of the Word to mature us into spiritual manhood. The end of verse 13 and the beginning of verse 14 until we, let me just read all of verse 13, "Until we come attain the unity of the faith and the full knowledge of the Son of God," look what it says, "to a mature man, to the measure of the stature which belongs to the fullness of Christ so that we are no longer to be children." Social maturity is the result of being exposed to a faithful Christ-centered exposition, faithful exposition. The Word of God is compared in analogy form to a seed.

It's planted and it grows, Luke 8, 11 says, into a plantiful or a massive harvest. Jesus prayed in John 17, "For our growth and grace as we're being matured by the Word of God sanctify them with the truth, thy word is truth." And that God has sent pastors that teach in the church to help us grow up in Christ. As Paul says in verse 15, "That we would be no longer children but that we would grow up in all aspects into Christ." Helios the Word here in the Greek is for what we translate into mature, but the idea is that we would be fully developed.

Spiritual manhood, and again this is not gender specific, it's a term that describes just our maturity, both men and women that have been born of God. It's talking about our growth. Paul would write to the Corinthian church, he would say, "Brothers, do not be children in your thinking, but rather in evil be infants, but in your thinking be mature." Then to Colossae, he would write in Colossians 1, 28, 9, "Him we proclaim, admonishing every man, teaching every man with all wisdom," listen to this, "so that we may present every man telios, complete in Christ." The same Greek term, complete in Christ, mature.

Paul says, "For this purpose I also labor and strive according to his working which he works in me in power." Why do we need this? Here's why we need it my friend, we all come to Christ as infants, as children in the faith, and that we need to grow, we need to mature. First Peter 2 says, "The milk of the Word of God enables us to grow in respect to salvation, that our maturity," listen, "our maturity will always be in accordance with the Word of God being preached and taught from the pulpit." It's God's ordinary means of grace to help us to grow.

Nothing can replace the local church and those that have been divinely gifted and called, set apart by God, who preach Jesus Christ from the Scriptures. Nothing can replace that. Nothing can be a substitute for that. Are we yielding ourselves? Are we faithfully coming to hear the Word of the Lord because there's not any substitute, there's not an alternative, that God has chosen the methodology of preaching to mature His people through the men He has set or called to preach and teach and to shepherd the flock of God in His church?

That God empowers the preaching of the Word and the Holy Spirit breathes upon the preaching of the Word of God from the pulpit in the context of the church and He matures the church to the full stature of Christ. I would say in the broader sphere of evangelicalism, the church is filled with so much immaturity because Christian people do not see how critical this grace is. Or maybe it's because pastors in so many churches fail to feed them the Christ saturated Scriptures. We all are familiar in the book of Hebrews and I know you all are preaching through that right now.

I hope that I'm not saying anything that's been preached upon recently, but the Hebrew author exhorted the people, there were some that were stuck in infancy and says you need the elementary principles of the oracles of God repreached to you. They needed milk. They needed to mature because they were babes. They needed to grow. They were stunted in their spiritual maturity. This is in Hebrews 5, verse 12 through 14 and then Peter exhorts the audience that he writes to that they need to long for the sincere milk of the word that they might grow by it.

So here's the point, faithful preaching, Christ centered preaching, Christ centered exposition will grow you and I into spiritual adulthood. That honors Christ. That's what a healthy church does. Listen to me, the church isn't about entertainment. It's about growing up in Christ. It's not about entertainment. It's not about making me feel good. It's about me growing up and maturing to honor and glorify Christ. Something I'm learning is that the cosmos doesn't rotate around me. It revolves around Jesus. God already spoke in chapter 1 of Ephesians, verse 10 that God is summing up everything in Christ.

One preacher said this, "Don't find a church closest to your house." He said, "Find one closest to the Bible." The true statement. I believe it was Tom Askel that said this. He says, "Don't be a 90 minute church member." He says, "Find a healthy New Testament local church and build your life around that. Build your life around it because it's conforming you to Christ.

It's causing you to mature and that honors and glorifies God." Healthy churches are built by healthy Christians that are maturing on a faithful diet of expository preaching that reveals the glories and might and wonder of the Lord Jesus Christ and His redemptive work and in His persons. Don't look for a church that's fun. Look for a church that's faithful. Don't look for a church that entertains you. Look for a church that equips you. Don't look for a church that conflates you. Look for the church that instructs you. That's the Word of God's teaching. The Bible says in Revelation 19.7 that the bride has made herself ready.

She's taken this book seriously. She submits to the teaching and the preaching of the Word of God. As Paul would write in Ephesians 5.26, you can look over and just flip the page that He washes her in the water of the Word. That she's been cleansed. That she's been matured and that she is ready for her groom. This bride is ready for her groom. She has made herself ready. That the Word of God has done the work of God and the maturing of the people of God that we are ready for that consummation. That we are ready for that moment. By the way church, let me just stop for a moment and say that this is a slow work so be patient.

You are not going to grow up into spiritual manhood in two weeks or two years. But the Lord is faithful. As the Word of the Lord is being taught and preached, He grows us up. The fourth feature I point out in verse 14 is the work of the Word of God to cultivate spiritual discernment in the church. Look at it with me. Is everybody okay? Wave at me if you are alive. Alright, if you are asleep, hold your hand up. I will have one. Smarty pants.

Verse 14 says, "So that we are no longer children tossed here and there by waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by the trickery of men, by craftiness and deceitful scheming." The greatest threat to the church is not outward in terms of persecution. The greatest threat to the church is always internal with false doctrine. Paul warned the church of Ephesus. This is in my notes. It just came to mind in Acts chapter 20 verse 28 and he said that there will be wolves, ravenous wolves that arise from within that begin to conflate and twist and scheme to rob the scriptures of their meaning and their context.

So it is not persecution that harms the church, it is false teaching. We have all known as we have studied church history that this has been evidence throughout time and space that there were so many heretical churches in the early church that there was the Gnostics that denied the humanity of Christ. There were the Arians that denied the deity of Christ. There were the Judaizers that were denying the freeness of God's gift of grace. I think it makes a powerful point pastor that we would be gravely wrong to think we have to go back to the early church to recover right doctrine. We have to go back to the Bible to get our doctrine.

We have to go back to the Bible. The early church battled so many lies that were dealing with so many falsehoods. There was not a development of a good doctrinal theology in the early church. But we have to as God's people go to the Bible to get our doctrine right and that maturity growing in grace as you are hearing, preaching and teaching from your elders, from your preachers, from your teachers in the local church, you begin to develop discernment. You begin to exercise your spiritual senses in an accurate way as you are maturing. I served most of my adult life as a police officer.

I did 30 years in law enforcement and a good portion of that was as an investigator, a detective. I remember going to schools that was put on by the federal government about how to identify false currency. I mean there is a lot of fake hundred dollar bills floating around out there. We did not look at the fake hundred dollar bills to determine that they were fake. We looked at the authentic ones. We studied them real. We had magnifying glasses. There were little colored threads. There was a lot of cool stuff in there that you do not even normally think about.

Someone can hand me now a false one hundred dollar bill and in two seconds I can tell you that it is not real. The reason that I can do that is because I spend a lot of time studying the real ones. As you are hearing the truth of the word of God you are maturing and you are growing and you are developing a spiritual sense of discernment about you to where you can begin to pick out error that is soul damming error and recognize the truth. The truth of the word being preached develops discernment.

The Hebrew writer would pin in Hebrews 5.14 that solid food is for the mature who because of practice have their senses trained to discern both good and evil. Counterfeit doctrine is easily discerned as we grasp biblical doctrine. It is the only safeguard we have against error. He said, "Nah, I do not need that, I have got the Holy Spirit." He is the Holy Spirit of truth. He reveals truth to you. You have got to lay the word of God up in your heart.

It is the work of an expositor to lay a foundation of truth in the lives of God's people and it will be that plumb line of truth that will expose the crooked lies that is being proclaimed by false teachers. Paul here speaks in our text about children that are tossed here and there by waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine. The idea there is of an unanchored vessel being in turbulent waters. It is blown everywhere the wind carries it. It is one of the characteristics of children. They run to every new fad that surfaces. I live in the threshold of the charismatic movement and the newest, neatest is what the people run after.

There are Christian people in that movement but they are immature. They are tossed to and fro. You have the new church that comes into town and they have got this new thing going on. You have the church that has been there for a while. They see what the new church is. "Well, we have got to one up them." They start doing this and then they all run back. Then they go from place to place and they never come to the full stature of Christ. They never grow up. They are tossed like the waves. They are here and they are there.

They are all over the place and every time you talk to them they are chasing some new fangled idea that has come to the churches that they attend. But a mature man, listen, a mature man is anchored to Christ. He is an anchor of the soul, both sure and steadfast, one that is entered in behind the veil after the order of Melchizedek. Jesus Christ, He is the anchor of our soul. Let me just say this, beloved, and it might help you to understand this. Paul's doctrine is not always outwardly outrageous. Paul talked here about the craftiness, the trickery and the deceit associated with false teaching.

By the way, Satan always and most effectively uses this particular strategy. That is, he takes a truth and then he twists it ever so slightly. He subtracts a little bit here. He adds a little bit over here and then he twists it a little bit there. Listen, and that deviation over time is deadly. 2 Corinthians 11, 15 says that Satan disguises himself as a righteous minister. That is kind of scary. He has got a suit and a Bible. He has terms that are familiar to the Bible's language, but he twists it. He adds, he subtracts, he changes ever so slightly to trick the people of God.

Listen, the greatest danger facing the American church is a doctrinal danger. It's the almost evangelical position. It's the Christianity that's in outward form only, but it has a little bit different theology. It's Christian, but Christian in name only. It uses the name of Jesus. It uses the language that's familiar to us in the Bible, but the terms and the truths have been altered and changed. It's something that's seductive. It sounds so good. It's always the immature that are carried away by its seductive schemes and its trickery. Here's the point.

The only safeguard we have against these sweet lies of Satan is the salty truths of the Word of God. That's what God gives to us to cultivate discernment in our lives, and it takes time. That's why you need to be in a faithful church like Grace Life Church in Brookhaven sitting underneath a godly expositor because God's at work. You may not feel it. It's slow. It's not in the extraordinary. It's in the ordinary, faithful preaching of the Word of God over time that discernment is being developed.

So whenever that click off statement's made by some preacher, come to our church, we've got this, and it's so religious, but it's a click off, and you go, "That ain't right, pal." My pastor's been preaching and teaching the Word of God to me for the last five years, and I know better than that. I know better than that because the Word of God has helped me to understand. God sets pastors and teachers in the church to help us exercise our senses. Not in the flamboyant, not in the extraordinary, not in this sense that you have to have some special this or that.

No, it's in the faithful, verse by verse, word for word, preaching of the Word of God that God is in your heart, you don't feel it, you don't even see it yourself, but God's developing discernment in you, and then He sends you back into a world of lies, and you can pick those lies out because the Word of God by the Spirit of God has given you the wisdom of God and that you know what is true. You know what is true. Adults are mature. Adults are knowledgeable. Lies don't trip them up like they trip up little children. I'll tell you, come over to my little candy truck, I'll give you this, you can trick them, you can get them over there.

But an adult says, "Don't you go over there, Johnny." I know that guy. I saw him in the newspaper. I read what he did to other children. Adult knows the truth, right? Listen, this is why it's critical that you never choose a church based on emotion or feelings. A church is to be chosen on the basis of biblical fidelity. Why is that? We need to be taught. We need to learn. Lord Jesus Christ and you listen and you cannot grow in a church environment that aims at stirring your emotions week in and week out. It's a deadly opiate. It's a wicked serum. You don't think a church because, exclusively because of its music.

Now even though you guys have got tremendous music, it's all gospel driven by a godly man. You don't go to a church because it makes you feel good. No, you go to a church because it's the pillar and the support of the truth as we find in 1 Timothy 3.15. It's the volume of truth that ought to win us. It's doctrinal precision that trains us to discern our errors. Doctrinal precision. Fifth and finally it's the work of the Word of God to further our, not our knowledge of Christ. That is true. We've already talked about that. Look at me. But our conformity to Him. Being changed to be more like Him.

Verse 15, "But speaking the truth and love we are to grow up in all aspects into Him who is the head that is Christ." Paul wrote in his magnum opus to the Romans, Romans 8-29, "But to those he foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his son." Brothers and sisters, the most formidable force in the cosmos is what God has given us in His Word. It's the truth of God that causes us to be more and more like Christ. It's the truth of God that empowers our growth in grace to be more like Jesus. It's the Word of God that transforms us into the lightness of God by the preaching of the Word of God.

And this growth is the work of the Spirit of God as He uses the truth that He inspired to grow us to be more and more like Christ. He shall glorify Me. He takes that which is of Mine and reveals it to you, shows it to you and that we have the Christ centered Word that grows us and matures us to be more and more like Christ. Sanctification through the truth of God, John 17-17. It's a work of God. Colossians 2-19, I'm about done so bear with me for another minute or so. It says the entire body is being supplied and held together by the joints and ligaments and it grows a growth that is from God. It grows a growth that is from God.

God grows His saints in the garden of divine truth. God grows His saints in the garden of divine truth. It conforms His people through the Word preached, conforms them to Christ. Psalm 119 as you are familiar is the longest chapter in the Bible. It has 176 verses about the power and the glory of the Word of God. It is one of the richest chapters in all the Psalter. It showcases the supremacy of Scripture. In verse 130 it says, "The unfolding of your words gives light and it gives understanding to the simple." And I want us to think about just for a moment the sphere in which truth gives its best yield.

It is the truth that has been spoken in love by a man of God that God has set apart to serve Him. Don't forget the context here. God has set men in the church, pastor teachers, to equip the saints. To equip the saints to do the work of ministry. God has put a man of God behind a pulpit that has been raised up by God to teach the people of God that we might be conformed to the Son of God. But this is a truth preached in love. I have talked with your pastor about you and as he speaks about you tears run out of his eyes. And I know that he preaches to you with a heart of love. We need that because the Scriptures are a two edged sword.

They are sharp. So underwriting every exposition should be the spirit of love. The spirit of love that causes us to grow in all aspects into Christ. You should never wield the Scriptures in a loose fast way that every sermon ought to be tempered in love. Listen the motive for preaching is something that is utterly critical isn't it? To preach the truth in agape, Christ like love. The love of Jesus Christ. It's to temper all that we say. All the truths that we preach are to be tempered in Christ like love.

So it's not only the truth that cultivates Christ likeness in you and I, it's the truth with the current of divine love being expressed through a pastor. Paul demonstrated this didn't he? I'm about done. 1 Thessalonians 2, 7 and 8 then down to verse 12, "But we proved to be gentle among you as a nursing mother tenderly cares for her own children.

And in this way having fallen affection for you, we were pleased to impart to you not only the gospel of God but our own lives because you had become beloved to us so that you would walk in a manner worthy of the God who calls you into his own kingdom and glory." Paul says I preach a love that is like a preaching like a mom loves her little ones. I preach tenderly, affectionately with tears flowing out and this kind of preaching grows saints to be more like Christ.

It's not the drill sergeant preacher, it's the tender weeping one that preaches out of his heart because he loves Christ and he loves Christ Church, he loves the redeemed people of God and he preaches with this love. It's not ooshy-gooshy-mooshy but it's love that causes us to grow up to be more and more like Christ. This is a truth that cannot be overstated that our conformity to the Lord Jesus Christ is being worked out as the Word of God is being faithfully preached every week because the Gospel is the power of God unto salvation.

Not just justification but also sanctification and it will be to our glorification because salvation in the context of the New Testament includes regeneration, it includes sanctification and it includes glorification. You can't separate that and the Gospel is the power of God to make me more like Christ when it's breathed upon by God as it's being preached in love. I say all that to say this, don't sell what the truth has bought in this church because these are the marks of a true church and they are the marks of an expository pulpit. Proverbs 23, 23 says, "Buy the truth and do not sell it.

Get wisdom, discipline and understanding." What kind of price can you put on this? God's given good gifts to His church, given for our good, given for our eternal good, for the glory of God. Listen, let me just say this as I end, outside of Christ and Him saving work in my life and His saving work in your life. The greatest gift that God has given His church is a faithful pastor that preaches the Word of God, an expository pulpit because it's what God uses to put His glorious Son on display to form us and shape us to be more like the Son, to develop in us a sense of biblical discernment, to bring us to the full knowledge of Christ, to cause us to mature and to grow in grace and to please God in all aspects.

Let that sink in for a moment. Every Sunday when you come here, every Sunday night when you come back, every Wednesday night, God gives you gold bullion. He gives you the truth. Don't sell it for entertainment. Don't sell it for what the world offers in the name of religion. Don't sell it for anything. I'm not just saying this. What you have here is absolutely precious. Brookhaven, Mississippi has a diamond sitting right in its center of its city and you're here and it's you and it's your shepherds, it's your elders, it's this local church and God's blessing it and God's going to continue to bless it.

I told your pastor last night over dinner, five years from now, your mind's going to be blown as to what God's done. It's because God blesses the faithful preaching of the word, the faithful shepherding of his people. Just note it down in your journal and go back to it five years from now and say, "Pastor Derek, what's your act?" Five years from now, you're going to be astounded by what God has done in this community through this church. I'm seeing the same thing in the church where I serve. We're so thankful for every word that comes from the scripture.

I'm thankful for this text that I've been given opportunity to preach tonight and see the chapter we want to read.